The innovative filmmakers were shooting scenes for their forthcoming documentary, which follows a year in the lives of three different penguin communities. They witnessed everything from love rivals fighting to childless females "chicknapping" other baby penguins. However, the quality that was most seen was the species' devoted parenting.

The documentary was made by French-Australian cameraman and scientist Frederique Olivier and her field assistant, Martin Passingham. They spent almost a year in Antarctica, and traveled miles of frozen sea ice to gather this footage.

In a statement released by the documentary's makers, they said that the "key to the success of the spycam missions" were the animatronic cameras that were able to "silently infiltrate the colonies to record the penguins' often emotional, and sometimes amusing behavior." Each animatronic penguin had its own camera, but was also able to lay its own "egg-cam" to film from a lower perspective.

Aside from the lovey-dovey stuff, the spy cams were able to record some of the more serious penguin matters, such as emperors negotiating sea ice, rockhoppers braving stormy seas and Humboldts dodging Peruvian vampire bats.